Continental automotive systems us

The automotive market for semiconductors is shifting into high gear. Right now the average car has about $350 worth of semiconductor content, but that is projected to grow another 50% by 2023 as the overall automotive market for semiconductors grows from $35 billion to $54 billion.This strong growth is being driven by the need to develop what we are calling the ‘connected car.’ The term refers to the multiple electronic systems in a vehicle that collectively take data from wired and wireless sensors and combine it with high-performance processors and analog/power semiconductors, to provide the vehicle with semi-autonomous and ultimately fully autonomous capabilities.These capabilities include Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) such as collision and blind spot warnings, sophisticated infotainment and telecommunications options, and precise electrical control of major vehicle subsystems like the powertrain, among many others.The move toward the connected car is driving … [Read more...] about Toward Self-Driving Cars

By Ann Steffora Mutschler System-Level Design sat down to discuss the opportunities in automotive electronics with Alexandre Palus, principal SoC architect at Altera; Aveek Sarkar, VP of product engineering & support at Apache; Mladen Nizic, engineering director, mixed signal solution at Cadence; and Stephen Pateras, product marketing director, silicon test solutions at Mentor Graphics. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SLD: What do EDA tools need to do to accommodate the automotive industry requirements?Sarkar: A lot of the automotive customers use more esoteric processes like other mainstream. BCD tends to be very common, LDMOSs: big devices that are able to handle high voltage ranges. Overall, that’s one of the things that we see. When we have to analyze these ICs, we have to be able to handle these esoteric, non-mainstream process technologies, and the coupling now earlier. It would have been mostly analog chips with very small digital content. Now they … [Read more...] about Experts At The Table: Automotive Electronics

The Smart City Challenge will be an accelerant of automotive semiconductor innovation. The U.S. Department of Transportation has chosen Columbus as the winner of the Smart City Challenge, entitling Ohio’s capital city to $40 million U.S. government funding, along with $10M from Paul Allen’s Vulcan investment firm, and $90M that Columbus raised from private partners, to create a fully integrated transportation network. Figure 1. Automotive semiconductors being developed today for use in the 2018-2020 model years are key enablers to autonomous driving, and to the semiconductor industry’s growth. Source: Arteris, Inc.This is a bigger deal for those of us in the automotive semiconductor industry than we may think. One of the key issues with expanding the use and consumer desirability of autonomous vehicles is understanding the ramifications of their interactions with “real world” actors like cars driven by oblivious human drivers, randomly reckless … [Read more...] about USDOT Smart City Challenge: Columbus Drives Future of Automotive Semiconductor Development

Cars have been getting smarter for years, studded with suites of sensors and supporting electronics aimed at keeping them from crashing. But entertainment and convenience have rapidly caught up to safety as the impetus for new in-car electronics development. Because automakers typically spend three years developing and producing new cars—and new gadget candy to go with them—they’ve found themselves constantly playing catch-up with consumer electronics and consumer expectations. So car companies have teamed up with the makers of smartphone software platforms to integrate a spectacular array of apps designed for handsets with cars’ digital dashboards, center consoles, and speaker systems. Take for instance Ford’s new Focus all-electric vehicle, which made a big splash at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month. It features a software application called MyFord Mobile. The app, which runs on Ford’s proprietary Sync … [Read more...] about Smarter Cars? There’s an App for That

It is August 2013, and we are sitting in what looks like a standard S-Class Mercedes, nosing through traffic in a small town in southern Germany. The streets are narrow and jam-packed with cars, and pedestrians are everywhere. Yet nobody has a hand on the wheel, and nobody has a foot anywhere near the pedals. Still, you can’t fault the driving: This car is in charge of itself. Or herself. We and our colleagues at Daimler call her Bertha, after the wife of Mercedes-Benz founder Karl Benz, who exactly 125 years earlier became the first joyrider in history when she took her two sons for a 100-kilometer jaunt in her husband’s car, from Mannheim to Pforzheim. When the leather brake pads wore out, she found a shoemaker. When the fuel ran out, she bought more from a pharmacist (who marketed it as a cleaning fluid). Her point was to prove that her husband’s internal-combustion engine was ready for general service. Our point is to retrace her famous route and thus prove … [Read more...] about How We Gave Sight to the Mercedes Robotic Car

Bentley has a lot on its plate for such a small manufacturer. The famed British brand just replaced the Continental GT with a brand new model, meaning the successors to the GTC and the Flying Spur are right around the corner. At the same time, the company needs to keep up with the latest trends in the automotive industry without losing its identity – or losing ground to the competition.We sat down with Rolf Frech, Bentley’s board member for engineering, to gain insight on what went into developing the second-generation Continental GT. He also revealed how the brand plans on uniting the timeless luxury it’s known for with cutting-edge technology. Digital Trends: Bentley just introduced a brand-new Continental GT. Can you tell us a little bit about the design brief you gave your team?Rolf Frech: I can trim it down to just one sentence: the new one had to be better than the old one. That’s what was driving us. But, of course, that’s just a short description … [Read more...] about Bentley’s R&D boss talks Continental GT, and how to unite tech and luxury

Two of the biggest names in self-driving cars are joining forces. Google and Continental will announce a partnership to further development of robot car tech, Reuters reports.The exact nature of the agreement will be announced at the 2013 Frankfurt Motor Show, which begins September 12. Continental is also pursuing a collaboration with IBM.The pairing could mean big things for driverless cars. Google has been testing driverless cars (with a “driver” in the car monitoring the driving) on California roads since 2010, and even lobbied to have the machines’ presence on public roads in the Golden State and Nevada formally legalized to further their development.Continental is a major automotive supplier, producing everything from tires to stability control systems. It has also taken a major interest in automated driving, testing cars of its own and partnering with BMW to develop an autopilot system for highway driving.“Automated driving is set to become … [Read more...] about Google and Continental partner to develop self-driving cars

If carmakers are to be believed, autonomous cars are right around the corner. Some like Nissan and Mercedes-Benz have in fact been so bold as to put a 2020 debut date on their first self-driving models.Carmakers tell us, however, that the arrival of autonomous, self-driving cars depends on the ability to use sensors already in place on some production cars. These sensors, including radar, and dual forward-facing cameras, currently used for accident mitigation and avoidance along with Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), are intended to be used as the robot driver’s eyes.Why must automakers give double duty to the sensors adorning the front-end of their latest models? That’s because the Velodyne Lidar Inc. unit atop self-driving cars like Google’s cost $70,000 apiece, which makes that technology financially unrealistic. And there is – rightfully – the expectation that few customers want cars with a metal cylinder on a mast on the roof, as the device requires.Real … [Read more...] about Ready to nap behind the wheel? The road to self-driving cars remains a long one

Eleven robotic vehicles will compete in the final race Saturday of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge event, the group announced Thursday.Selected from a group of 35 that participated in qualifying events over the past week or so, the 11 finalists will now have to successfully complete a complex, 60-mile urban course with live traffic in less than six hours. They will operate on the course roads alongside approximately 50 traffic vehicles driven by professionally trained volunteer drivers.The winning robotic vehicle will be chosen on the basis of not just speed, but also safety: They must meet the same standards required to pass the California DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) road test. The first-place prize is US$2 million; second and third place will garner $1 million and $500,000, respectively.The teams named as finalists were the Ben Franklin Racing Team, of Philadelphia; CarOLO, of Caroline, N.Y.; Honeywell/Intelligent Vehicle Solutions, of … [Read more...] about Robot-Car Finalists Rev Up for DARPA’s Urban Road Rally

An autonomous robotic SUV from Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing team won the US$2 million prize in the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) Urban Challenge by successfully completing an urban obstacle course faster than 10 other finalists in the race, held Nov. 3. "Boss," as the robotized 2007 Chevy Tahoe is called, averaged 14 miles per hour over 55 miles.The DARPA Urban Challenge is the third in a series of competitions DARPA, an organization that does military research for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), has sponsored to help foster the development of autonomous robotic ground vehicle technology. The DoD hopes such research will lead to developments that could help save lives on the battlefield by performing hazardous missions.DARPA held its first Grand Challenge in March 2004 on a 142-mile desert course in California and Nevada. Fifteen autonomous ground vehicles attempted the course, but none finished, and the $1 million cash prize went unclaimed. In 2005, in … [Read more...] about Carnegie Mellon Automated Car Grabs the Gold at DARPA Challenge